


Forever is a Long Time

by TheXWoman



Category: Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Post-Finale, Season/Series 03, Series Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-22
Updated: 2010-05-22
Packaged: 2018-05-24 04:08:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6141031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheXWoman/pseuds/TheXWoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, Gene Hunt woke up and he thought about two DIs named Sam Tyler and Alex Drake, and his heart was filled with a bland, desperate emptiness that could only be known by a lonely man who had been left behind by the two people he had loved more than almost anything in the world. And he wished he remembered why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever is a Long Time

Alex Drake didn't know what to expect when she walked through the door of the Railway Arms.

Part of her wondered if it was all a trick, and she would simply cease to exist. Or maybe she'd become a shimmering ball of light and happiness and bollocks. Or maybe she'd be reincarnated into something else. Perhaps a cat. She really wouldn't have minded being a spoiled, over-loved house cat. 

Her hand grasping the handle of the pub's door, Alex wondered briefly if there was a purgatory for house cats, too.

But, in the end, what she got was exactly what she hadn't expected.

It was just a pub.

“Hey, bein' dead isn't what I expected,” Chris said to her.

He lounged at a corner table, a drink in one hand and Shaz's hand in the other. Shaz was smiling like she had won the grand prize, and Alex figured maybe she had. Maybe all of them had.

“What'd you expect, choirs and angels?” Ray already had a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and Alex figured it would have been too much to ask that the afterlife be a non-smoking establishment. Of course, it didn't really matter, did it? It wasn't like it was going to kill them.

“Maybe,” Chris muttered.

“Div,” Ray replied.

“Ma'am, come sit down,” Shaz said, pointing to a chair at the table. 

“I ordered a drink for you,” Chris responded, fishing a fag from his coat. “Where's the Guv?”

And they were all staring at her. Alex felt like her world should be spinning out a control, and she felt like she should feel like she wanted to cry, and she felt like she should be angry and upset and lonely and helpless.

But Alex didn't feel like that at all. She felt like they had just finished a hard day at work, wandered down from the nick to sit at the pub and chat like old friends.

For a lack of a better word, Alex felt happy.

“He'll be along, in his own time,” she told them.

Shaz nodded curtly and Ray and Chris turned their attention back to each other, and Alex sat down at the table as Nelson, with a flourish, placed a big glass of Sauvignon blanc under Alex's nose and made his way back to the bar.

“So what do ya think of the Railway Arms, Shazza?” Chris asked, his voice filled with excitement, like he was sharing the best inside joke he had ever known. Alex smiled to herself.

“I love it,” Shaz declared, munching on crisps and looking around. “To think we almost didn't make it here. And here we are, together, forever.”

If there was such thing as emptiness in a place to filled with life, Alex felt it for a second. For the most fleeting of moments, she remembered what it felt like to be sad.

“Forever is a long time,” Alex told her.

***

Gene Hunt really disliked this new kid.

New Kid was irritating, and when he talked it was like listening to a pack of rabid chihuahuas, and it took him a week to get past the fact that 1983 didn't have iPhones. Whatever the hell an iPhone was.

And New Kid was thick. Much more thick than Tyler or Drake had ever been, and the only thing that made Gene push through and move on and try to reach him was that he still remembered. 

He remembered for a long time.

And after a while, the 1980s faded into the 1990s, and New Kid never did get the point. He stuck around like a wad of shit on the bottom of Gene's shoe and kept yapping, though after a while it became less and less about iPhones and more about the same typical bullshit, and they fought and drank and after a while, they were almost friends.

And as time passed, Gene started to forget. And as more time passed, he began to forget what he was forgetting.

One day, Gene Hunt woke up and he thought about two DIs named Sam Tyler and Alex Drake, and his heart was filled with a bland, desperate emptiness that could only be known by a lonely man who had been left behind by the two people he had loved more than almost anything in the world.

And he wished he remembered why.

***

At some point, it all went to shit and Gene was left wondering what exactly he was sticking around for anymore. The force had changed, much to New Kid's delight, and Gene wondered if the time had come to pack up his boots and his Mercedes Benz and retire somewhere on the coast like any over-worked copper should.

Sitting in his office, boots propped up on the desk and a glass of warm scotch in his hand, he watched New Kid Who Wasn't So New Anymore ruffling through some files that had been collecting dust on a corner shelf.

“Oi, who's this, then?” 

Gene's eyes flashed up, and New Kid was holding a photograph of a dark haired woman. If her clothes were any indication, it had been taken sometime in the early 80s.

“Where'd you find that?” he replied coldly.

“It was in this pile here. Old girlfriend of yours?”

Gene grimaced and shook his head. “Nah.”

New Kid shrugged, but he didn't put down the photo. “Is this DI Drake? The one that was here before me?”

Gene evened his stare. “Drop it.”

But New Kid wasn't about to. No, he picked everything bloody like a scab. That had always been his way, just like the way of every DI that had come before him. “Never did find out where she went, did you?”

Huffing, Gene swallowed the remainder of his scotch and reached across the desk for the bottle. “Sometimes people just leave. Never really know why.”

“You know,” New Kid said, placing the photo on the table in front of Gene. “You keep drinking that shit like water, it's gonna kill you one day.”

“Shame,” Gene replied, filling his glass to the brim.

New Kid rolled his eyes and headed for the door, and Gene watched him. “Hey,” he finally said, before the other man was out the door. “You ever considered going for DCI?”

“Thought about it,” New Kid admitted, almost embarrassed. “But I can't think of replacing you, Guv.”

“Well, maybe it's about time someone did,” Gene said.

New Kid furrowed his brow and left without another word, and Gene spent the rest of the evening polishing off a bottle of scotch and staring at the bright eyes of Alex Drake in a photograph he never remembered taking.

When he left CID that night, he headed straight for the trattoria. It wasn't Luigi's anymore; Luigi had left years before, and since then it had been turned into some kind of posh wine bar that hadn't made for much of a copper's boozer. They'd been using a different one up the street, but something about it had never felt quite like home.

Gene figured he should have been more surprised to find where Luigi's once had been, he found the door of the Railway Arms instead.

***

“She was brilliant, though, wasn't she?” Chris beamed again, and Alex smirked into her wine, shaking her head. Shaz looked nearly embarrassed by his boasting.

“She wasn't any better than the rest of us have been,” Ray argued.

“Shut up, Ray,” Alex replied. She looked at Shaz warmly. “You really were brilliant.”

The jovial atmosphere hadn't changed since they arrived, and even thought they hadn't been there but minutes, Alex had the strangest feeling that they had been talking for decades.

But forever was a long time, and the clock on the wall always read 9:06.

Ray had just opened his mouth to respond when the door of the pub swung open and something of a revered silence fell upon the occupants of the Railway Arms.

The dark, star speckled night that constantly streamed through the windows was a stark contrast to the soft light of the pub, and the starlight glowed around the form of DCI Gene Hunt.

“Nelson!” Gene barked. “Scotch, and make it quick. I need a bloody drink.”

Alex stumbled out of her chair more quickly than she felt like she moved in ages, and Chris offered the Guv a playful salute as he made his way toward the table. 

“We were wondering when you'd come along, Guv,” Shaz told him.

“I told you he'd come, when he was ready,” Alex whispered.

The sounds of the pub started up again, and Gene glanced around, nodding at the familiar faces of people he had nearly forgotten, before his eyes landed on Alex. His gaze tore through her, and she trembled.

“You coulda dressed up a bit, Bolly,” Gene stated. “It's not like I didn't give you almost ten years.”

“More like ten minutes, Guv,” Alex replied. 

“You know,” Gene declared, taking another step towards her. “I didn't like it. Living for years not remembering, wondering why I had to lose two good coppers like you and Tyler. Made me feel like I was doing something wrong.”

Alex pursed her lips. “Strange how the right thing can feel so wrong sometimes, isn't it?”

Gene's face puckered into a frown. 

“Who's replaced you?” she asked.

Gene shrugged. “Some little twenty-first century shit with too much education and the common sense of a grain weevil.” Nelson took that moment to swing by, delivering a fresh round of drinks and offering the Guv the smallest of smiles. “Bit like you, Bolly. Without the legs.”

Alex crossed her arms. “I'm sure he'll do you proud, Gene.”

“Why don't you sit down, Guv?” Ray said. “Or is it Gene now?”

“Always Guv, Raymondo,” Gene replied. “Don't you forget that. But I got one more order of business to attend to before that. Something I've been waiting to do for a long time.”

And with that, Gene filled the space between he and Alex, pulled her close to him, and pressed his lips against her so forcefully she thought she might fall over. Once she got her bearings, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, sighing into his mouth, wondering how someone could live so many years without being kissed like that.

Death was nothing like Alex Drake expected.

Alex wasn't sure if the kiss lasted seconds or decades, but it was all the same to her. Once Gene pulled away, she realized the talking and hubbub of the table had been replaced with Shaz and Chris laughing and whooping up a storm, and Ray muttering about public displays of affection and how that had been the most disgusting thing he had quite possibly seen in the whole of life or death.

“Well, that's sorted,” Gene said, and Alex nuzzled into his shoulder for a second before they both finally sat back down at the table. “Now, second order of business. Booze.”

“Took your time, didn't you, Guv?”

Alex's euphoria interrupted, she turned towards the new voice, her eyes landing squarely on the face of the man who had haunted her life for so long that it was almost a relief to finally see him in front of her.

“DI Alex Drake,” Gene said over the rim of his glass. “Meet DI Sam Tyler.”

Alex smiled at him. “It's a pleasure.”

“Pleasure for you, maybe,” Gene sulked. “And a double pain the arse for me. Figures I'd get stuck spending eternity with you lot. Here I was, hoping Heaven was a beach filled with half-naked women and expensive sounding drinks. And what do I get? Shit scotch and endless conversation with a tart, three twats and a plod.”

“I'm a DC now,” Shaz corrected him.

“I'll go get Annie, she'd love to see you,” Sam said with a thin smile. He nodded briefly at Alex before vanishing back into the depths of the pub.

“Scotch can't be all that bad, can it, Guv?” Chris asked, raising his own pint.

“And you'd better get used to the company,” Alex added. “We'll be all you have forever.”

“Forever is a long bloody time, Bols.”

Alex tilted her head, her eyes running across the table. Ray and Chris, sharing their own secret joke in their eyes that no one else could ever understand. Shaz, relaxed in her chair, her eyes shifting between Chris and Alex with a bright shine of happiness and adoration. Somewhere in the pub, Alex could hear the voices of Sam Tyler and Annie Cartwright bickering playfully. And then there were the eyes of Gene Hunt, staring at her over the rim of a scotch filled glass, and she felt like she didn't ever need to look away from those eyes again.

Forever was a long time and, Alex thought, it still might not be long enough.


End file.
